Category: Uncategorized

Don’t listen to the news.

Just don’t.

I’ve been driving to Brighton. People try and say things on the radio like they’re good news. “It might be possible for vaccinated people to travel to either Portugal or Cyprus after May 17th,” somebody says in their best happy voice. I almost have to stop the car in a layby in order to strip naked and set fire to everything. Instead I just howl at the road on front of me like a wounded manatee.

I do not want to divide my life into two sections. Into “Before the fall” and “after Covid”. I don’t want to sit in a circle of old people in thirty years and say “when we were your age, we could go anywhere we could afford to go. I remember sometimes I’d just get on a plane and go somewhere. We never knew it would change so quickly. If only we’d known.” I don’t want to say that to a young person who I can tell doesn’t even believe me because all they’ve known is ever decreasing circles.

I hate everything about this. And I’ve just driven to Brighton so I’m covering more ground here than most. Lou is my mental support bubble and I have to be able to say that in case plod tries to slap a fine on me. It’s been happening at Borough Market. Somebody walked there from Battersea, which is a pleasant walk on a sunny day. I had a similar one a few weeks ago. They were told they had strayed too far by the police, and were issued with a fine. That’s crazy.

Despite the Audi and the freedom it gives I still feel trapped, and I can’t see the end of it. I have a hunger to see the world. To experience as much as I can in his short story I’m creating, before my bits stop working. Right now I can still hike up a mountain. I wanna do it. Himalayas or even Kilmanjari – anything but Everest although even that – the Macdonalds of Mountains – might be a bit less of a tourist trap right now. I could join the legion of idiots throwing tissues and farting in a queue so they can go home and make out like they’re Edmund Hilleary. Get me out there. “I went up Everest and all I got is this stupid T-Shirt”. I want to see and feel and know all the things damn it all. And yes I also have my calling, and it’s always been a balance between the two energies. The need to be available for the nebulous job that could crop up at any moment is constantly at odds with the need to get up and see all the things, and both of them are balanced by the fact that money doesn’t grow on trees so I have to be resourceful within my choices. But … the world is shut. The whole fucking world is shut. I need a lear jet. Or an ocean going yacht. I need to cover some ground. But no matter how many times I buy that lottery ticket it doesn’t seem to come in. So I continue to be surrounded at home by antiques because I haven’t the financial space to say “oh just take the lot for a fiver. And while you’re at it, drop me a quote for a full redecorating job. I’ll be taking the yacht to Corsica with the puppy.” I like the antiques but they wouldn’t be there if I didn’t have to hustle for cash. And they’ve done me well over the last few months, thankfully.

Bring it back. Ugh. Has it really been less than a year? I’m done with it.

At least I’m by it seaside again. And somewhere, I guess I should remember that I chose this existence.

I finally had a really good look for my passport today. There’s the prospect of a lucrative if logistically difficult drive to Prague on the horizon. Plus who knows if I might suddenly have to jet off to foreign climes to do my job. Also, in the wet and dark, I wanted to have a little moment of triumph when I found it.

Hours of searching. Nothing. Just a vague memory of the thought “hmm that shouldn’t be there. Best put it somewhere safe.” Sod it.

It might be in the car for some reason. I’ll look tomorrow. If not, lost means lost when you’re in this flat. If it’s gone, it’s gonna show up eight years from now inside a sculpture when I accidentally drop it, or stuffed into the neck of an ornamental rabbit, or taped to the back of a photograph of a battleship. The only way to find it would be not to look for it. I’d be better off starting the process of reordering it before there’s a flood at the passport office as the airlines open up and everybody goes on their cheap flight to the sun.

Instead of searching further I’m going to walk away from the problem entirely. I’m off to Brighton tomorrow. I need to see Lou, and the sea. There’s a carpet going into the bedroom on Monday and I want to get out of here for a couple of days before that happens. Soon that room will be the peaceful haven I need. Maybe then I’ll find the passport. Maybe then. Before I leave I have to build my mini-studio and imitate my father into a microphone for a computer game. Then it’s out to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky.

It IS peaceful here, even with the clutter. But stuff makes noise. I’m constantly overstimulated by the sheer quantity of stories attached to all the items in my keep. 38 owls on overstacked shelves all staring at me as I write. Piles of important papers mixed up with telegrams that just showed up in a box of junk and are interesting. Winston Churchill and Hello Kitty and Nikolai Dante and a glass pelican and no passport.

At least I have a calling card. A showreel again that is new and feels new. These refreshes can help psychologically and it’s a good time for a refresh. I need to be able to think I’m doing everything in my power to get myself in the running for things. I do really hope I have a Eureka moment with the passport as it’ll be hanging over me until I find it that I can’t just jet off to Latvia tomorrow to replace poor Charlie after he threw that cameraman out of the window and lost the job.

It’s before midnight. I’m clean and in bed. This is an unfamiliar thing – my body must know I’m heading back into Lou-time. Sleep soon and maybe I’ll dream where the passport is. If not, the bedroom move and the following domino effect of stuff might lead to its discovery. Or I just bite the bullet, shred eighty quid and start the three week process. If I’d done that when I first noticed I couldn’t find it I’d almost have it by now. But… Eighty quid.

Just down the road from me, in Pimlico, I have a very skillful friend. He’s an actor as well, one of the ones who’s in it for the long haul. We have a shared understanding on that. Like me he has many side hustles. It’s another point of contact. You need a good distracting side hustle in this business or you slowly go insane and surround yourself with fish and snakes and antiques.

Our side hustles sometimes overlap. I’ve been Fixing on a set where he was Location Managing. We both drove for a show about speed and clothes. But he can edit film, which I really haven’t learnt yet. He’s good at it too. He has all the software, and he has that touch that you only see after long practice, where he jiggles the sound to fit the story and drops in this shot from one place and that shot from another and makes it all blend so you think it was made that way.

We’ve been trying to shove together a showreel. It’s such an odd process, showreel cutting.

First I found everything I could get my hands on. Footage that was sent to me by lovely directors. Footage from things I made years ago sent through by directors who are still friends. Stuff on YouTube. Things I’ve just had on old laptops from forgotten WeTransfers. We download and rip and assemble. Then we cut it we prune it and we end up not using most of what was collated in the first place.

My 2002 scenes with McAvoy are gone now in favour of an older looking me in glasses being mean to a load of Germans. We aren’t using poor Manfred, who was so brutally executed by his girlfriend after a fight. The dancing shaven headed sex addict has gone back to the internet where he lives. There’s currently a spot of me as Shakespeare, a moment of Michael Howard, a hospital shot, a hissing gangster and a scientist. By the time we’re finished I think we will have cut the scientist as well. “Kill your darlings” is frequently excellent advice in the creative process, and it seems it’s true of editing a videographic calling card. All we need is a few seconds really. “Let’s have a look at this Owl Berky guy. Here he is. Yeah he’s got a face. He walks. There’s his voice. Great. Put him on the list.” Job done.

A helpful way to spend the day. Once it’s finished there’s an excuse to reach out and try and get somebody to employ me to ply my trade. Joy abundantly.

It’s been a contemplation of the after effects of Brexit. Of the six things we have kept so far, one was shot in Berlin by Danes (I was flown out). That wouldn’t be possible anymore. One was a co-production with Greece, employing 50% Greek and 50% British actors, shot between Greece and the UK. That wouldn’t be possible anymore. One was a German TV show, with entirely German crew, shot in Cornwall with UK and German actors. That wouldn’t be possible anymore. By coincidence, half of the things that I’m happy enough with to include on my calling card – they’re not possible anymore because of Brexit. Were it not for Covid we would notice these things enough that there’d be much louder noises. Netflix and the Shakespeare thing were American co-pros, so still not 100% Engerlish. The only homegrown one we kept was a lovely little short for which I was paid the princely sum of a pound.

I’m glad to get a reel done even though I’m a bit shocked to find that half of my work on film as well as a large part of my work on stage wouldn’t be possible in this post Brexit world. We need to sort out an artist’s touring visa stet. Bastards.

Pretty much the highlight of my day today was discovering that the new LED panel that I bought for the fish tank has got NIGHT MODE! Now my fishies are bathed in blue light, and my penchant for fishy voyeurism can be slaked at all times. They can flibble around at night and not bump into each other. It’s like the full moon is shining on their little pond as my giant smiling mug pushes up against the glass.

I still find it astonishing that only one of them has karked it so far. That was right after the move. Considering they are all geriatric fish, I’ve done well. The internet is an amazing thing. Despite my almost complete lack of experience, charmless YouTube tutorials really can teach us to do anything. “Hey guys, today I’m going to teach you how to split the atom, please like and subscribe.”

Various different human beings with expensive set ups and no charisma have taught me how to change the water, change the filter, clean the gravel and sort out problems with the heater, and that’s after they taught me how to move the fish and acclimatise them in the first place. Listening to the tutorials is often like drilling holes into your own face. The YouTube tutorial phenomenon is a timely reminder that content is the prime mover. Style adds finesse, but if there’s no content you really have got nothing. If I didn’t want what they had known I’d have changed over in seconds. We need content.

Which is troublesome for me today, as I’ve done fuck all again. What content do I have for you? I’ve had about three consecutive days of ineffectual pottering despite having loads to do. I’m still a bit swamped by it. I’ve been reacting to the flood of tasks recently by walking from room to room looking at things and occasionally disconsolately wiping a paintbrush on something, or picking something up a bit.

It’s ten past one in the morning. I put my head down and said “oh fuck the blog”. So it’s rushed as well. Rushed and no content. Punch the like and subscribe button. It’s my nose.

Thankfully I’m not drunk. I think the last few days – this could have been a lot worse if I hadn’t smacked down that particular habit. Yeah I’ve been low, and retreating in a bit. Who hasn’t? Last year’s Al would be half senseless by now and this would have turned into a rant. Tomorrow I’ve set an early alarm and I’m planning to bounce around and get things done all day, yeah? Or not.

I’ve just had a winding back moment, that’s all. The lights have been switched to blue for me and I’ve been dozy in the moon. Best put that sun back on tomorrow. Maybe.

I’ve been looking over the blogs from last year again. It’s so strange to feel the change. Last year I was aware of the possibility of a lockdown, but just as a theory. A little firebreak that might be deemed necessary. I was worrying what it might do to businesses if things had to slow down for a week or two.

I was driving a selection of vehicles to Heathrow every day and waiting, breathing in and out as people came flooding from international arrivals past me and my sign. I was carrying different passengers from different countries and they were all eating tubs of Marks and Spencer flapjacks and sharing Percy Pigs out of the packet fresh off the airplane as I took them to their hotel or went location scouting. “Oh God I’m so sick,” said one woman. Her job was to run a venue where people made a load of cakes with different flags on. “I’ve got some kind of flu. My temperature is everywhere. Put the windows up, I’m cold. It can’t be this Corona, I’ve only been in Italy. Stop putting the windows down, are you trying to make me more sick?” Thankfully the cakes were just for show. Whatever it was she had she gave it to me. But those were the days where we would be unwell in each others company.

It’s the flu season, and whether or not this is a horrible year, at least we aren’t all streaming with something. Lemsip sales must be right down now that we aren’t casually infecting each other with all the little illnesses. Most of us get some sort of bug that stirs in the warmth in early spring. People would get on the tube with eyes streaming and pockets full of tissues, rocking their sleepy way full of head and paracetamol to a job they felt they couldn’t afford to miss. If you moved away when they started hacking with feverish cough next to you they’d look at you like you were being intolerant, and carry on louder. Now they’d be wrapped in clingfilm by cops in hazmat suits and clinically burnt. The world shifts.

I saw an army of masked coppers in the entrance to Mornington Crescent tube last night trying to move on one maskless homeless guy. He was cold and seemed pretty reasonable but didn’t want to move. It was a weird slow pantomime of proximity and distance. I didn’t stay to watch.

This year, if we get an eye infection it’s definitely Corona. If our leg starts twitching it’s Covid 19, no doubt about it. It’s like we’ve forgotten all about the existence of The Common Cold. There’ll be people showing up at A&E with a mild cold, weeping, begging for a spot on a ventilator.

I’m still feeling pretty good thankfully. I did another self tape this evening, perhaps a little rushed and I discovered why we don’t use ring lights when I saw the footage on a bigger screen. Fucking thing stole my pupils. I can’t imagine this one will go my way, but it was fun doing it. I’m getting to the stage where I like the paraphernalia of taping at home, God help me. The technology afterwards I can leave behind. But the acting bit is fun…

I gotta get something soon. Going crazy here. More driving this week though. That’s something I guess…

It seems people are thinking about summer suddenly. Matt the talking ham is very happy that they’ve ineffectively vaccinated twenty million people instead of properly vaccinating ten million. These empty fools. Then there’s the fact that even after vaccine, people have grown used to the trappings of pandemic. Stockholm syndrome. The Guardian ran an article the other day telling us that even if we are vaccinated we should still wear masks because we don’t know how to use handkerchiefs when we sneeze. Friends of mine shared it. How long before we get this out of our system? And that’s not even taking into account the fact that more people than you can imagine are skeptical about the vaccines. Questions like “How long do they last?” and “Will we have to pay for boosters down the line?” are running alongside questions like “How do we know there aren’t unexpected side effects?” and “have they been adequately tested?” Then you have more people than you’d credit hearing from outlets they trust that the vaccines contain shifting nefarious things that are designed to do badness in one way or another. I have close friends that are genuinely angry with all the fucking idiots who think the vaccine is going to kill people. I have close friends that are genuinely angry about all the fucking idiots who think the vaccine is going to help people. It’s a mess it’s a mess it’s a mess, and it’s going to polarise and polarise further if we aren’t careful because everybody thinks everybody else is stupid.

Habits have very long half lives. There will be fears and habits we carry through generations as a result of the scar of this non-plague plague. Like saying “Bless you” when somebody sneezes. Pope Gregory I died in 652 AD. While he was alive he suggested to the Romans that a little prayer after sneezing might help protect the pious people of Rome from the ravages of the bubonic plague. We still do it now – “bless you” – despite it having lost all context and meaning. It didn’t help then anymore than it helps now. What fallout will we carry from this shitshow, down through the centuries? Already things have changed. We apologise and face the wall when passing neighbors on the stairs. We do the elbow touch, complete with mutual “ha ha isn’t this hilarious” acting. I don’t think I’ve ever done an elbow touch without the accompanying pantomime and it’s existed for almost a year now. Ha ha ha, do a little dance, we’re all screwed. I’ve already contemplated language changing – “social distancing”, “shielding” etc. The people who would pull away when you hugged them – they’re about the only people feeling happier.

But … Hope. Spring is springing. And this huge Virgo moon is incredible. I’ve been sitting in the light of it as I write. Virgo is a moon for practicalities. Admin moon. I stepped on and broke the charging wire for my laptop last night when I was practicing accordion and I’m kind of ok with that. The laptop was getting to be more about sinking hours of the day into various entertaining holes than it was about sorting things out. I’ve ordered a new wire from Hong Kong and it’s in it post. Meantime I need to sort things in the real world. I need to move and carry and finish without letting me distract myself with comforting bullshit like computer games. The world will come back eventually with all the time consuming and passionate distractions, and if I haven’t made bigger strides in this flat and Hereford and Jersey and all the things I will lose sleep regretting it down the line.

Plus I want to see Lou. She’s been back in Brighton and I’ve been back in Chelsea and I miss my sputnik. I might be driving some boxes to Lyme Regis on Tuesday but I might not be. It’s all still very much up in the air, as is everything always at the moment.

I have the beginnings of a comfortable room at home. I have a bath running. The summer festivals look to be going ahead as programmed. Life? Maybe.

This evening I walked up Primrose Hill with my friend. After empty streets of Camden, suddenly there was life. Music. Laughter. Dancing – all in the freezing cold and dark at the top of a hill. I mourn for what’s not possible. But people are still finding ways to be together. Maybe we’ll be ok and this won’t splinter us too much. I hope so.

Here I am, lying on my back in bed, surrounded by candles, smiling. The ubiquitous smoke is burning, roiling between me and screen of my laptop. On my laptop a man with nipple length hair is playing guitar into a complicated microphone array. He’s singing in falsetto soprano backed up in thick alto by a woman playing a squeezebox beside him. As it happens, they’re in the same little village in East Sussex that I was flown away to board at when I was eight. Forest Row.

I didn’t think I wanted to go to this. It’s a gathering of the people who were connected to Medicine Festival last summer – the only summer festival we got away with having in the UK, and a beautiful outlet weekend for a very small number of careful sober people connected with healing, heavily policed for social distancing by angry looking security guards used to working Glastonbury and confused about how there was nobody to restrain. Beautiful, needed, and human. I was a lucky boy.

I didn’t want to go on zoom and to connect through a screen to something that we had such a profound physical and spiritual connection with this summer. It’s been better than I expected though. Lovely people. “Always be stepping forwards into the light,” they are saying as I write. These are people full of heart. In part they are my people, as much as the strange and gorgeous people I play let’s pretend with for money. I always exist on the edge if I can, coming in and out of the light of the fire. But this has been a tonic despite the fact it is delivered to me via technology – specifically via my great big noisy gaming laptop. And I feel part of this community.

It’s full moon in Virgo and it’s been bright all day. A powerful time to cleanse and flush out the unhelpful messy stuff we’re carrying around, if we believe in all that stuff – and I find it helpful to do so as you know. There’s a lot of noise at the moment and a lot of opportunity for dark thoughts and dark behaviours. But with Spring approaching and with the end of this time of constraint and fear perhaps in sight at last, it’s a good time to connect with God, or with the gods, or the power, or the universe or the spaghetti monster or whatever you want to call it. There’s a lot of light out there and there’s lots more coming.

This evening of Zoom has helped me feel part of a circle again – connected to a community. Just like with my local Buddhists. I hate Zoom for communication because I always notice what’s not possible. But the variety has been wonderful this evening, and as I’m always reminded by Creation Theatre, much is possible on zoom. People from all over the world, from Forest Row to Costa Rica in the last few minutes and now even The Isle of Man. Songs and thoughts and prayers and wisdom and togetherness. That’s all I really needed for a Saturday night after a practical day.

The carpet fitter came over in the morning. One step closer to the room being done. Oh joy.

Now I’m going to get back to connecting with all these lovely people as they share their lovely moments with us. Just in time for the woman in the Isle of Man to have fixed her microphone – a potential friend if I do move back there…

I bought a new duvet on eBay. It has lots of tog and it is full of duck feathers. I slept under it last night and it was heavy and warm and I slept so damn well. It was great. I thought I’d let you know. It’s worth treating yourself to improvements that you don’t need from time to time…

My dreams are lively at the moment. My dreams are always lively, and I’m usually in some capacity, able to steer, but the dreams of late feel peopled. I often wake up mid conversation with some form of entity. I get up, service my watermelon prostate, and go straight back to the conversation. They’re usually benign, although one of them can be a little fucker. The conversations are enlightening as far as I remember, but I’m not writing them down and they burn in the daylight. I only remember snatches, and it’s the little fucker that can most effectively put things into my waking mind.

Now I have the added comfort of this heavy duvet though sleep really is an event. Warm cosy long strange colorful conversations with things beyond our ken and cosy happy dreaming. And the occasional angry oilfaced shouting gremlin. But I’ve got the measure of it. I’ll be off again soon. I can’t wait.

Today I shamelessly stayed in sweet strange slumber until ten. It was great. I rolled out of bed shortly before the doorbell rang bringing Jethro fresh from the Belgian Embassy to help get a load of redundant mdf out of the bedroom and into the car. It’s looking even more viable in there now. Carpet guy has rescheduled until tomorrow but I am confident I’ll have a nice room sooner rather than later – an oasis of peaceful slumber where I can commune with my weird entities in comfort.

I took the MDF over the river to the dump, through the bright streets of London town. Spring really is in the air now. Clear blue skies and sharp white light on the walls. With the majority of people indoors, you can see the beauty of the architecture around this eclectic metropolis. There’s precious little nature to distract you, and not the usual thing of a story on every corner. Instead you can see how there’s been a lot of time money and thought put into the edifices all across this colourful city. We are surrounded by art.

After the dump I got home and was sad that the cricket was over. It’s a massive shame for cricket fans. The first test in daytime hours shown on terrestrial television for like a decade. Channel 4 bought the rights for big money and then the wicket was so bad that both teams were dropping like flies and England dropped first. It was over before the end of the second day of a five day test. Channel 4 must be regretting paying all those millions of pounds. God knows what they’re showing instead. Endless punditry or reruns… One more test but it’s in India again and I think it’s back to our night time.

Weekend tomorrow. They come round fast. Enjoy it. I’m gonna buy some tulips.

Usually when things are expensive they’re ordinary things that have been held up to cameras by smiling twits. You’re paying the fee for the twit rather than the cost of the ingredients. With Farrow and Ball paint, I’d gladly be that twit, and I wouldn’t feel I was misleading those baying legions of fans. It’s great. I’m thrilled with it. It’s lovely to use. Tick.

We painted the ceiling with a basic B&Q type paint and it was far less satisfying. It was like wiping the ceiling with a chalky sock. It didn’t even cover the oily brown stains that come when I don’t get the bucket up the ladder in time. Now the bedroom walls are finished. They catch the light beautifully. When I do the other rooms I guess I’ll have to budget accordingly and try some more. I can be a cheapskate with the finish instead of the ingredients. Like putting a beautiful meal on a basic plate…

“In terms of finish do you want Polish Builder, or expensive decorator?” asks Jethro.

It’s Polish Builder every time with me, assuming as I do that Polish Builders are the people you employ to just get the job done quickly and cheaply. Many Polish Builders do a wonderful etc etc many other countries etc etc etc etc

The point being, I don’t really see the edges, even if I’m looking. People that do see the edges tend to disturb me as much as people who miss the point and derail perfectly good sentences in order to police gross generalisations about Polish Builders.

In the middle of the day a surveyor came to look at the ancient water ingress into my flat. Finally. That’s been a decade or so of me mentioning it to no avail. He was laconic and rather pleasant, with the ease of a man who has made a very large amount of money. By the feel of it he might say the right things to make it so I don’t have to climb a ladder with a bucket whenever there’s a rainstorm. He’ll make more money, I’ll spend more money. I’m making overtures to get the work I’ve already had done retrospectively covered by the insurance. Fingers crossed.

Then as soon as it was all done, I had to join a zoom meeting with a few of the lovely people who practice disobedient Buddhism in my district. They’ve worked out that I’ll almost always sack it off if they haven’t given me a responsibility. “Will you read a poem of your choice?” Every. Fucking. Time.

I chose this one. Larkin. So right for just now that even if it’s not really a performance poem, it begged to be the one. And I like to try to prioritise content over style. Much as it would have been lovely to smash out one of Romantics and make everybody fall in love with me. Next time. Here’s the Larkin. I should have noodled on my guitar. I basically read it in the same way I’d try and read Keats.

Coming:

On longer evenings,

Light, chill and yellow,

Bathes the serene

Foreheads of houses.

A thrush sings,

Laurel-surrounded

In the deep bare garden,

Its fresh-peeled voice

Astonishing the brickwork.

It will be spring soon,

It will be spring soon—

And I, whose childhood

Is a forgotten boredom,

Feel like a child

Who comes on a scene

Of adult reconciling,

And can understand nothing

But the unusual laughter,

And starts to be happy.

We are allowed to have workmen round. We are also allowed to be friends with people who are handy. Sometimes we can make this align to our advantage and have handy friends round to do some work.

My hands are covered in paint, the wall in the bedroom is covered in paint, the carpet in the bedroom is covered in paint. Tomorrow we’re going to cover the paint in paint. Tomorrow we are also going to paint the ceiling which involves pain(t) and suffering and a different spin on the idea of facepaint.

Over the last few hours I’ve occasionally wandered in to the bedroom, looked at the wall, smiled beatifically and wandered out again. Change.

I’ve been stymied a little bit so I’m absolutely thrilled to have started movement again in there. Nobody will be looking for a room in London any time soon, but I’ll have a lovely one for me in the meantime. I want to keep it sacred from clutter – a peaceful oasis that allows the ongoing series of explosions to continue in the other rooms while I peace out in there surrounded by candles and incense and plinky plonky music. You can come too. No touching.

Farrow and Ball make good paint, and they’ve spent on the marketing. If you live in the Cotswolds and you don’t paint your house in Farrow and Ball, there’ll be an angry mob with designer pitchforks politely using the doorbell so they can insist that you mend your ways. Likely either Alewishis Farrow or Nurgatiddly Ball knows someone in the current Tory cabinet. They’re the ferrari of paint, you see. I knew I simply MUST have the room painted in effybee, darling, I mean there just IS no other paint, d’you know? Effybee every week for me!

This all happened because you can’t buy less than 2.5 litres of the effing bastard. Jethro treated himself, and he’s treating me with his sloppy seconds. He came round armed with half a tin – plenty. We’ve done the first coat including the radiator. Now it dries. Then we use the rest of it up and hopefully avoid having to buy another tub since they come in at £54. Then, shiny room. The colour is Bluegreen. They don’t need to call it things like “Desperate Horizon” or “Cogitating Blackberry”. They aren’t afraid to say it like it is at Farrow and Ball, don’t you know. If it’s a grouse they call it a grouse, and shoot it. If it’s a blue-green they call it bluegreen and paint it.

I’ve had to look them up now. I got curious.

John and Richard. They met in a claypit after WW2 and wanted to make clayish colours, apparently. History doesn’t record whether or not it was daddy’s claypit. I’ll roll the dice that it was, even if Richard saw active service. They make the paint without all those nonspecific nasty things that their rivals put in that lesser paint – the one that’s reasonably priced and isn’t theirs. Somebody is good at talking and knows someone at The National Trust. Flagship store in Chelsea, darling. Crossed the Atlantic. The rest is history.

I like it. I’m a sucker. I like it. It’s nice. I’m a sucker.

I feel like I have good resonant moneypaint that will surround a peaceful bed in an uncluttered room from whence I will launch myself rocket-like on the world of dramatic employment when it all wakes up again. There’s the old idea that if it has cost more, you value it more. Capitalism has hungrily fucked that idea. But somehow…

Jethro is cosmic in a way I understand deeply. We operate in a similar fashion. I want his moneypaint in that sleepyroom, applied consciously with the sweat of his brow – (and mine). Two energy workers, changing the literal colour of a room. It’s gonna be a hell of a room when we are done, with the river matching the paint and clean in many many ways.

There’s a business here if we weren’t busy playing let’s pretend. Shamanic painters. “We change the colour and the energy in your room at the same time.” Flagship store in SW3. “I had my house painted by Barclay and Skinner and now I’m worshipped as a deity by a small community of hamsters in Staines.” We will be chanting and painting and making odd noises and burning things and you walk into your new shiny room and that thing you’ve had on your back for fifteen years falls off and jumps out of the window screaming in all eight dimensions and you spontaneously grow two inches taller and start glowing. “That’ll be eleventy sixteen dollarpounds and a horse. Thanks.”

I have all the best ideas.